Milobo’s Musings

Since Katie Morrow and I spent some time in our last Always On podcast talking about professional development, it got me to thinking about some of the strategies trainers can use to get teachers talking. As part of our regular 1:1 teacher meetings this year and during the district Technology Learning Facilitator meetings in my previous job, I’ve often had to find ways to encourage teachers to open up and talk to one another. Sounds easy enough, but if you’ve ever found yourself in charge of leading discussions with groups of teachers, you’ve probably experienced that empty silence that comes when no one’s quite ready to be the first to share. Here are techniques I’ve used to get conversations flowing:

Four Square

This is a very low-tech way I’ve used to get discussions started within small groups or pairs. Give each participant a piece of paper and have them fold it into quarters.  In each quarter, have participants write one word or a very short phrase to describe their thoughts. Depending on the topic, you might start with questions such as: What words would you use to describe:

• your best technology integration lesson?
• your biggest concern about the 1:1 rollout?
• your reactions to the reading we just finished?

Have participants exchange papers with a partner, who then circles one word on the paper. That becomes the discussion starter when it’s time to share. This has worked well because it piques curiosity in the words chosen and often leads to very interesting discussions. Plus, if you’ve got time to rotate discussion partners, you can keep using the remaining words as discussion starters for new conversations.

Video Vignettes

Video clips make great conversation starters, especially when you’re wanting the conversations to center on bigger ideas. I’ve started a playlist on YouTube where I bookmark videos that have been great motivators for conversations.  Take a peek through the videos linked below and see what you think.

S.O.S.

S.O.S. is a conversation organizer I came up with 4 years ago as an icebreaker for district Technology Learning Group leader meetings.  The purpose of each meeting was to allow Learning Group leaders time to collaborate and share best practices. But, because the meetings were only monthly and the teachers had little interaction with one another outside of this time, the conversations were sometimes slow to start.  At other times, the conversations had the potential to become nothing more than gripe sessions where everyone aired their frustrations, but few solutions or suggestions were offered in return. S.O.S. became a regular framework for our meetings and worked well to give purpose to the conversations. S.O.S. stands for Successes, Obstacles, and Strategies.  Those three words are used to help teachers organize their thought for sharing:

• What successes have you seen in your class (learning group, department, etc) this month?
• What obstacles have you had to overcome or are you struggling with?
• What strategies have you tried or are you planning to try to move forward?

I find that S.O.S. also makes for a good meeting outline, because it gives participants a chance to start on a positive note, air their frustrations, and end with suggestions for improvement or change. I find myself now using it for many types of meetings and even for general post-project conversations with teachers, because it can cover so many situations in a way that doesn’t inhibit the flow of ideas.

What other strategies or suggestions do you have for facilitating conversations and reflective sharing?

Picture courtesy Cliff1066 Flickr Creative Commons

Imagine that your school has been asked to host a visit from a group of international delegates who are interested in learning how you use technology to communicate, mentor, and collaborate with other schools both in town and around the world.

Now imagine that the delegates are from Saudi Arabia and are visiting the United States for the first time.

And you are one of two females in the IT department.

And you teach in the predominately conservative South.

In a Catholic School.

With a Crusader as a mascot.

Sound unlikely? Today that’s exactly what came to pass when a group of 9 delegates and 3 interpreters spent the afternoon touring our school and learning more about our technology program. The delegates all serve as leaders in the Boy Scouts of Saudi Arabia. Many of them also work as university professors or serve on the Ministry of Education in their country. We had little idea what to expect, but decided that we’d focus on talking about 3 aspects of our program:

• Mentoring elementary students in other schools through programs such as our iPodPals project.
• Collaborating with others via iChat such as the program begun by Dean Shareski where his pre-service students at the University of Regina are working with high school students around the world.
• Communicating with our student body and parents through a student podcast series created and maintained by our Design classes.

Three of our students volunteered to present to the group about the iPod Pals, while Colleen Glaude (our Technology Coordinator), Travis Brown (our Design and Media teacher) and I gave an overview of the other programs. We were fortunate, too, to have Dean join us via a video chat from his office in Canada for a portion of the visit.

Here’s the great thing.  Our students (and we) came into this experience not knowing what to expect.  We had been briefed on many customs that could be offensive (showing the sole of your shoe, giving a thumbs up, pointing with your left hand, among others). How accepting would they be of our students our school, and our country?

In the end, however, our students left with a greater understanding of how difficult it is to stereotype someone when they’re standing right in front of you, asking questions, smiling at your student’s work, and gasping as Dean Shareski shares images of the snow outside his window during your video chat with him. It’s a lesson I hope will remain with our students for life -that deep down, regardless of where we live, what religion we profess, or what the media reports, we really aren’t all that different.

As the delegation left, they gave each of us a lapel pin from their group (shown in the picture above), while we gifted them with bookmarks from our school that list our core values:

• Selfless Love
• Commitment to Excellence
• Personal Integrity
• Commitment to Service

The nicest thing? Seeing them nod in agreement as their interpreter translated the 4 values written on the bookmark. It seems that those values aren’t just important to us, but to others around the world as well.

Imagine that.

Over the past several months, I’ve had the honor of working with a group of wonderful educators from the New Jersey Powerful Learning Practice program.  My focus with the group was on Collaboration: How can educators use collaborative strategies both in the classroom and in their own professional growth? We’ve spent time learning about the skills and mindsets needed for successful collaboration, discussing the challenges of collaborative learning, and discovering what others have to say on the subject of collaboration.

To welcome a larger audience into our collaborative learning discussion, I’ve posted the conversation starters here on my blog. You’ll see a link to a listing of the discussion starters in the blog header above as well. My hope is that you’ll share your ideas and thoughts with us. I also hope that some of the original New Jersey participants will be willing to share their responses and replies too.  Their insight and the discussions that resulted within our closed community were a wonderful learning experience for me.

I look forward to hearing your comments and continuing the conversation.

Enjoy!

Much to my delight and surprise, I’ve been asked to serve as an “expert voice” for the New Jersey Powerful Learning Practice (NJPLP) virtual community. Powerful Learning Practice is a program designed to impact instructional methodologies and beliefs by using a combination of real and virtual experiences to build knowledge within a community of teachers, principals, university faculty and state level administrators.  Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson have done an excellent job of designing a plan that can meet the needs of all these diverse individuals as they work together to create positive change. 

As part of the program, participants have the opportunity to learn from and share learning experiences with experts in tools and pedagogy. Bud Hunt, blogger extraordinaire, is leading the NJ virtual community and sent an email my way about a week ago asking if I’d be interested in being an expert voice for the New Jersey cohort.

Tag, I’m it.

I have to admit I’m a little intimidated by the thought of being looked at as an expert.  Sure, I’ve had lots of experiences during my 20 years in education and experimented with many different technology tools over those years, but what is it that makes someone an expert?

Here’s what I’m hoping Bud and the rest of the PLP team are looking for:

• Someone willing to risk failure in order to find success.   One of the most important things I’ve learned is that no great thing comes without risk.  Learning how to fail is a skill I wish were taught to students, because it’s one they need to master if they want to grow. For many years in my Algebra class, I spent time after every test teaching students how to learn from their mistakes. They learned that by analyzing their errors, they’d figure out where their weaknesses lay and then could work to improve them.  My goal was to have them see risk and failure as an opportunity for learning, which would ultimately lead to success.  I’ve certainly taken my share of risks, including my current job.  Who would’ve imagined a K-8 teacher would be hired to help a high school faculty learn to integrate technology and redesign their learning environment to become more engaging?
• Someone with more questions than answers.  I’m still a learner at heart and part of learning is asking questions.  Lots of them. It’s that curiosity and need to understand that help me when I’m guiding teachers through the process of building units of instruction.  I don’t claim to be an expert in most of the subjects taught by the teachers I work with every day.  What I can do is ask the right questions to help them define their outcomes, decide what practices would help students meet their goals, and then determine what method will be used to measure achievement. Good teaching and learning practices are universal across all disciplines.  It sometimes just takes the right questions to help teachers find them.
• Someone who believes the best learning comes when all believe they have something to learn. I truly believe that there’s something to learn from every person I encounter. I learn from my fellow teachers and from my students. I learn from those with more experience that I’ll ever have and from those who are just starting out. That’s one reason I’m excited about the opportunity to join the NJPLP. Because while I’m sharing what I’ve learned, I hope to learn from those who are participating.

42.

If it were the number of students in your class, it might seem like an impossibly large number.  If it were the amount of minutes you spent per subject each day, it might seem a bit rushed.  But what if you knew that 42 is the average number of people who respond and react to a student’s work from the time they enter Kindergarten until they graduate from High School? The following video created by Barry Bachenheimer really brought the point home for me:

So, after 13 years of schooling, a student’s perception of their ability as a writer, thinker and communicator has been influenced and shaped by an audience of fewer than 4 dozen people.

Makes you think doesn’t it?

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has defined Communication and Collaboration as one of the key elements students must master to be successful in the 21st century workplace. This includes:

• Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing
• Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams
• Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
• Assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work

Most importantly, students need to be able to accomplish these goals within a global community.  It’s not enough for students to be able to work effectively with the person who sits next to them.  Now, they’ve got to be able to work well with the person who sits around the globe from them.

We’re giving students the tools to take their learning out into the world through the CHS 1:1 laptop program.  Now we’ve got to take those tools and help students learn to use them to collaborate within our school community and within the global community.  How? How about starting small within your classroom and then going global when you’ve got the hang of it:

• Start Small: Create a classroom gallery of work that can be rated and commented on by student peers. Celeste Bell is doing this now with her students by creating a Studywiz Gallery of their “Jesus Moments” photographs.  While she’ll tell you that the students enjoyed taking the pictures before she created the gallery, she’ll also tell you that creating the gallery has motivated students to respond to and appreciate the work of their peers.
  

 
• Go Global: Create a project that is published and posted on the web. Marilyn Stefani is doing that now with her student’s Earth’s Composition Wiki and Google Map.  Marilyn paired her students across two classes and asked them to collaborate to create one page with background information on an assigned topic.  She then challenged the students to identify current environmental issues related to their topic and create a collaborative map that gives a brief overview of the issue and links to more information on their wiki. It’s been a challenge to teach the students to work asynchronously on a common goal, but the payoff has been that students are learning how their actions (or inactions) affect others while appreciating the knowledge and talents of their fellow students.



 

 

 

Do people really pay attention to these efforts?  The answer is yes, and sometimes in a big way.  Last year, Nancy Collin’s class created a wiki project on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I wrote about it in a Scholastic article along with Christine Day’s Google Doc project.  It’s still out there for others to see and on a whim, we decided to use Google Analytics to keep track of how many visitors we have there.  In the last 6 months, there have been visits from exactly 42 locations. Not 42 visitors, or 42 cities, or 42 states, but 42 different countries sent over 1600 visitors to the site. How’s that for a global audience?

So, we can close the doors to our classrooms and give our students an audience of 1, or we can find strategies to give our students a global audience.  Their future will include the challenge of living and working in a connected world.

Are we preparing them for this challenge?

I’d like to say we’re giving it a good try.